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Friday, December 15, 2017

I wanted to read something I hadn’t read before for
Bill Crider Week, which is no easy task because I’ve read a lot of Bill’s books
over the years. But somehow I’d never read WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER, which was
intended to be the first of a series featuring Humphrey Bogart, narrated by
Terry Scott, a private eye who works for Jack Warner. Like Bill Lennox and Dan
Turner before him, Terry Scott is a Hollywood troubleshooter whose job is
keeping movie stars out of trouble. In this case, the star is Bogart. Frank
Burleson, a sleazy private detective who works for one of the lower-rung
studios in much the same capacity that Scott works for Warner Brothers, is
trying to blackmail Bogart. Jack Warner wants Scott to get Burleson off the
star’s back. But when Scott and Bogart pay a visit
to Burleson, they find the guy murdered—with a .45 stolen from Bogart’s
apartment during a wild party lying beside the body—and a couple of hostile
cops show up mere moments later to complete the frame.

All you have to do is read that description of the opening to know that this is
the sort of book I love, and I suspect many of you do, too. Naturally enough,
Scott and Bogart set out to find the real killer in order to clear Bogart’s
name. If Burleson was trying to blackmail Bogart, it stands to reason he had
other blackmail targets as well, and since most of the people who were at
Bogart’s party and had the opportunity to steal the murder gun are working
together on a jungle picture at Superior Studios, that leads the two
investigators into more trouble in a back-lot jungle, where, before you know
it, another murder takes place.

What do you want in a book like this? Snappy patter? Gangsters? Thuggish
henchmen? Night clubs? Beautiful actresses? Fistfights and shootouts and our
heroes being taken for a ride? You get all that and more in WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE
MURDER, and all of it told in a smooth, fast-paced style. Bill does a great job
of blending historical characters with fictional ones (Peter Lorre’s cameo
appearance is wonderful). Writing a historical mystery like this can be tricky.
It’s easy to go overboard with the period details. Bill never does this, and as
a result, the setting is very evocative without being heavy-handed.

I can’t even pretend to be an objective reviewer in this case, since Bill and I
have been friends for more than 40 years, but I can tell you this in all
sincerity and you can believe me or not: WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER is a
wonderful book, one of the most entertaining I’ve read in a long time, and I
give it my highest recommendation. And I’d say that whether I knew the guy or
not.